Jump to content

Flood?


radioman

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 191
  • Created
  • Last Reply

After watching, listening, and reading for two weeks, I have reached the following conclusions about the potential for Bangkok to flood:

 

1. Bangkok is a shallow bowl. It has flood-walls to isolate itself from the ocean, and from the Chao Phraya River - both of which are slightly above Bangkok's elevation. Typically, these barriers reach a level 4-5 meters above Bangkok elevation, and - typically - 2.5 meters above sea level....

 

 

According to Google search results, the average elevation of Bangkok is about 2 meters ABOVE sea level. This contradicts your statement that Bangkok is about 2 meters BELOW sea level. Where did you get the elevation data for Bangkok?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They still wouldn't believe it. Some of the red shirts positively hate Bangkok and its population. There were TV interviews of red shirt villagers last year when the city was being torched. Even women would screech that it served them right! If Bangkok wouldn't give them everything they demanded, it deserved to be burned.

 

You are dealing with true believers with an average IQ of around 90. Rots of ruck explaining anything they don't want to hear. Even now some red shirts have been demanding that Bangkok residents be taxed to pay for flood damages outside the city. Bangkok's people are greedy and selfish and refuse to give the villagers what "they should have" - money for nothing, money the city folks worked for.

 

TIT :dunno:

 

In case you haven't heard, dumb people have as much rights as smart people. The same goes whether you are poor, short, ugly, fat.... It's one person, one vote.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To zzzzzzz.

 

Maybe I should not have used the term "sea level". Maybe I should have used the word "ocean level."

 

If you look at the various tide tables - such as at: http://www.myforecast.com/bin/tide_extended.m?city=75672&metric=true&tideLocationID=T2323 or http://tides.mobilegeographics.com/locations/362.html - and you look at High Tide and Low Tide levels, what becomes apparent is that "ocean level" never gets down to "sea level" on a lot of days. Even the "low tide" level is above "sea level".

 

At any rate, Bangkok certainly has elevation differentials within it.

 

When I look at the headline piece at Bangkok Post on-line this morning, the headline photo caption reads: "The Western flood defenses of Bangkok are breaking down, and all of Thon Buri looks likely to be under at least half a metre within 48 hours - as canals and the Chao Phraya spill their banks" - I am left thinking that water is not "spilling banks" to run uphill. The bank must be higher than something that the water is spilling into.

 

Yesterday, I lost my "flood virginity" by standing about 2 cm deep in floodwater on Sukhumvit Soi 50 - water that was maybe 15 cm deep. of in the distance. Again, the report was that the flooding occurred because a breach had occurred in a flood prevention barrier that enclosed the Phrakhanong Canal, and water therefore spilled onto Soi 50. Do you think that the water "spilled" uphill? Do you think that Khlong Prakhanong south of Sukhumvit is significantly higher than ocean level?

 

I may be wrong - but my impression - after watching and listening for several weeks - is that some significant portions of Bangkok are LOWER than the embankments that border the Chao Phraya, large Khlongs like Khlong Prakahanong, and various other watercourses that "drain" Bangkok. And - in many cases, this "drainage" requires the use of massive pumps - to "push" water over some sort of barrier to natural drainage.

 

Maybe that concept exists only in my imagination - and the hundreds (or thousands?) of pumps that Governor Sukhumbund described as being part of Bangkok's water management system are just there to help water flow "downhill" from Bangkok's superior elevation, on toward the ocean or the rivers and major khlongs that drain Bangkok. But - I went out on a limb and drew the conclusion that a lot Bangkok must be at least a tiny bit below the levels of the drainage watercourses.

 

And - again - what someone's GPS gadget or on-line reference says does not outweigh what my own "lying eyes" absorb as I am standing in floodwater on Sukhumvit Soi 50 - that got there when a protective barrier failed, and water DESCENDED onto the soi.

 

I wonder myself what "sea level" means, in a tide scenario where low tide remains half a meter above "sea "level."

 

Cheers!

SS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

According to Google search results, the average elevation of Bangkok is about 2 meters ABOVE sea level. This contradicts your statement that Bangkok is about 2 meters BELOW sea level. Where did you get the elevation data for Bangkok?

 

 

Try googling for this and see what comes up: Bangkok below sea level

 

 

e.g.

 

<< Much of Bangkok is at sea level or about 1 metre above it, and the land is steadily subsiding in nearby coastal zones, and in parts of the city itself. At the same time the level of the sea is rising. In a worst case scenario within the next 40 years, vital installations and tens of thousands of homes and offices and factories will face major floods. >>

 

 

<< MR Sukhumbhand said Thailand has lost 113,000 rai (around 45,000 acres) of coastal land over the last 30 years. In the province of Samut Prakarn alone, a few miles south of Bangkok, land loss had been to the tune of 10,000 rai (around 4,000 acres).

 

I remembered travelling in a boat in the area with Dr Anond in 2007, purring along through water several metres deep where a road had once been, complete with the telephone poles sticking up out of the waves. >>

 

post-98-0-44953100-1319855700_thumb.jpg

 

"The waters of the Gulf of Thailand lapping at the telephone poles of Bang Khun Tien, which were on dry land only 20 years ago. This low-lying region is fighting a losing battle against the rising sea level, clearly seen in this photo taken in 2007."

 

 

<< At the FCCT, Dr Anond made another interesting observation — that the rate of subsidence of part of the coast, both on the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman sea, had increased after the December 2004 earthquake that had created the devastating Asian tsunami.

 

Up to 1.16 million buildings in Bangkok — 900,000 of them residential — were at risk from the worst case scenario of a coincidence of land subsidence, sea level rise and a storm surge, he said — and "ongoing efforts are not enough" to cope. >>

 

 

My link

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To zzzzzzz.

 

Maybe I should not have used the term "sea level". Maybe I should have used the word "ocean level."

 

If you look at the various tide tables - such as at: http://www.myforecast.com/bin/tide_extended.m?city=75672&metric=true&tideLocationID=T2323 or http://tides.mobilegeographics.com/locations/362.html - and you look at High Tide and Low Tide levels, what becomes apparent is that "ocean level" never gets down to "sea level" on a lot of days. Even the "low tide" level is above "sea level".

 

 

One of the tide tables shows 4 meter high tide. If Bangkok is 2 meters above SEA level on average, then it is 2 meters below OCEAN level at high tide.

 

It wasn't apparent how you got Bangkok as being 2 meters BELOW sea level in your original post when the prevailing view is 2 meters ABOVE sea level. But when tides are taken into account, it's apparent that average elevation of Bangkok can be 2 meters below ocean level.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tempers flare at sluice gate

 

Scenes at Bangkok's Klong Sam Wa sluice gate have been far from the feel-good images of Bangkokians pitching in and helping each other battle what some have dubbed the worst flood in a century.

 

Instead of people caring for one another and smiling while handing out food and other relief, residents have been living with flood water for nearly three months - and many have decided they've had enough.

 

Some 500 showed up on Sunday night, and by yesterday afternoon, after rounds of noisy confrontation and the deployment of hundreds of police, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra herself had to order the sluice gate open - up to a metre higher - to relieve some of the stagnant water that had turned stinky.

 

"Thank you, thank you," a senior police officer was heard on a megaphone at 3pm, announcing that authorities had yielded to demands of angry residents on this northeast fringe of Bangkok, to have the gate lifted by up to a metre.

 

Sombat Samanna, one of the angry residents, said some MPs visited them when the flood first arrived and told them "this area is to be sacrificed".

 

"We've been pretty much on our own since," complained Sombat, who said the flood that was originally knee-deep was now waist-deep, and the water foul smelling. And it had been nearly three months, he said, comparing it to the two weeks people in nearby Pathum Thani province have endured so far.

 

Rawan Sangsinchai, another resident, said she and her neighbours tried to call the district office for help but things had been "very slow".

 

Others said they wouldn't vote for Pheu Thai MP for Klong Sam Wa, Jirayu Huangsab, again as he hadn't been seen all these weeks.

 

At the site, trying to defend his junior colleague was Vicharn Minchainant, Pheu Thai MP from Min Buri, the district next door. Vicharn said Jirayu was very busy at the moment.

 

Some residents were anxious that the government may renege later on its decision to raise the watergate. One told me their MP would be held responsible if such a thing occurs.

 

Facing news cameras, Vicharn sounded sympathetic. "If people were being looked after and helped to understand, they wouldn't be doing these things," he said about the gathering with no clear leadership that has represented affected communities.

 

"I'm a [nearby] local MP and when people suffer, I must talk with them and not ignore [what's happening]," he said.

 

"If we don't talk like this, then people will do what they want," the MP added. "It all depends on public relations and in making people understand. But if we can't provide answers for the people, there'll be problems."

 

Soon after most reporters had left and the cameras gone, a few residents clamoured around Vicharn to give him a list of what they needed - dry food, drinking water, a floating toilet and a boat.

 

But just a stone's throw away, at the sluice gate, angry residents continued to dig up the soil next to one side of the watergate, allowing water to flow down towards the city centre unimpeded by the gate, into the Saen Saeb canal, which cuts through central Bangkok. Police merely watched. One said he didn't really know what he should do, given the situation.

 

The gap in the earth widened to one-and-a-half-metres in diameter and the foul current of water kept flowing rapidly.

 

"Sam Wa fight! Fight!" a woman shouted, adding that they should not go home but keep guard at the watergate.

 

"Keep digging!" shouted another.

 

Others whom I talked with said the government would not have paid any attention if residents hadn't formed the "mob" to force a better result for themselves.

 

The Nation

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

Don't these people understand that breaking dykes will NOT significantly reduce the flooding in their area? Maybe I am harsh, but all those people sabotaging dykes should be arrested. Instead, they are allowed to just continue without any repurcussions.

 

Rather than Thais helping each other it seems there is a lot of "Well, if I'm to be flooded so will everyone else!"

 

Sanuk!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...